208. Liberate Yourself from Weight Loss Conversations with Dr. Jessie Hehmeyer

Part of the Game on Girlfriend mission is to liberate women from the outside forces that tell us what we are capable of, what we should look like, and what we should or shouldn't be doing with our money and businesses. Dealing with our own bodies, our relationship to food, our relationship to health, and how we treat ourselves is the foundation of this work.

I'm thrilled to be talking to Dr. Jessie Hehmeyer, the founder of Well Empowered, where she practices data-driven and results-oriented functional medicine.

Jessie grew up as a dancer and recalls struggling with weight growing up. She realized in her 20s that struggling with her weight was interfering with her being fully present with the people in her life. 

We're born into a world where we very quickly get the message of what a good body looks like and what a bad body looks like. One of the things Jessie does when she starts to work with people is create completion with the past. She asks, when was the first time you remember thinking your body was how it should or shouldn't be?

"It's the inherited conversations in this area of our life about how our body should be and shouldn't be mixed with wanting to have some control over how we show up and our world as a whole," says Jessie.

Some of it is psychological, some of it is biochemical, and some of it is social. There are so many different layers to food. There are things we've heard people say that become truth.

One of Jessie's favorite examples of this is the concept that food or beverages are good or bad. I cheated yesterday, or I was so good last week. This language is the language of morality. And there is no morality in food or beverages.

Food and beverages produce certain outcomes. We either like those outcomes or we don't. How do we give up the old conversations of morality to avoid shame? Imagine what it would be like to not have this on your mind anymore, to just have it handled.

Jessie helps people overcome the all-or-nothing approach, like extreme dieting followed by overindulgence. Peeling that back one more layer is self-aggression. It doesn't work.

She helps move people towards the middle ground. It's created through the living, and people have the chance along the way to gather insights. See what works, see what doesn't work, rather than, "Oh, I made a mistake. Just forget it. I'm a failure, and so I might as well just give up."

"The whole middle ground mastery journey is really one of self-love," says Jessie.

Jessie acknowledges that people will struggle to lose weight if their thyroid isn't working well. But she also highlights three other areas that need to be talked about: elevated inflammation, suboptimal insulin sensitivity, and detox pathways not running smoothly.

"I practice data driven natural medicine because it is so grounded in this data," says Jessie. Functional medicine is designed to identify and address the root causes of people's symptoms or disease processes as health challenges. It's not always true that you can completely heal the body, but taking a root-cause approach can support it.

Connect with Dr Jessie Hehmeyer: https://www.wellempowered.com 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wellempowered/ 

Other GoG episodes you might want to check out:

When You Hate Your Body, People Get Rich: https://sarahwalton.com/megan-hadley/ 

How to Love Your Body: https://sarahwalton.com/marla/ 
You can check out our podcast interviews on YouTube, too! http://bit.ly/YouTubeSWalton  

Thank you so much for listening. I'm so honored that you're here and would be so grateful if you could leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts by clicking here, scrolling to the bottom, and clicking "Write a review." Then, we'll get to inspire even more people!

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